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Taxing people for the defense of the country and protection of the people is not even close to wealth redistribution.
Taking money from a plumber working 60 hours a week to feed his family and giving it to somebody else who is not working is WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION.
The taxes you pay is the price you pay for the benefit of living in this country so you can work as a plumber 60 hours a week and have lots and lots of money left over after taxes to feed your family and well as afford lots of luxuries like driving a BMW. LOL We, the people, say what is done with tax money via the people we elect to represent us and what we want in government. When the majority of people want to eliminate all public assistance, then they will be able to enjoy the sight of fellow citizens starving in the streets (children included) and they can build fortresses to try to protect themselves from the millions and millions of people who are in complete physical survival mode. How far outside your "compound" do you think you'd be able to drive your BMW then?
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why not? i think it should be because taxpayers end up paying for anyways by subsidizing their income with welfare,food stamps, medical care, (not that i care) etc people "its not suppose to be long term" well these are different times, if a college graduate can't get a job, high school graduates are more screwed... so the corporation can pay for it or we can in taxes
why not? i think it should be because taxpayers end up paying for anyways by subsidizing their income with welfare,food stamps, medical care, (not that i care) etc people "its not suppose to be long term" well these are different times, if a college graduate can't get a job, high school graduates are more screwed... so the corporation can pay for it or we can in taxes
Indeed, it's far past time that the corporations paid their fair share, rather than being "only takers."
The taxes you pay is the price you pay for the benefit of living in this country so you can work as a plumber 60 hours a week and have lots and lots of money left over after taxes to feed your family and well as afford lots of luxuries like driving a BMW. LOL
Horse crap.
People were having the benefit of living in this country and working 60 hours per week, long before ANY taxes started to be imposed.
The reason you can have lots of luxuries and drive a BMW, is because of the 60 hours a week, not because of the taxes.
Back then, taxes were, in fact, used mostly for what you said: to benefit you. But a different benefit from what you were probably thinking. The government you paid the taxes to, had as its job, keeping others from messing with you in ways you didn't ask for, while you were working your 60 hours a week. Cops would keep crooks from robbing you or raping your daughters. A fire dept. would protect you from fires, mostly by (hopefully) putting out your neighbor's house before the fire spread to yours too.
But now, taxes have spread to FAR more than just those things. People check to see if you're draining a swamp in your back yard, that they don't think you should be draining (even though it's your swamp). Other people check to see if your toilet is using too much water or your light bulbs using too much electricity. Some of your taxes are paying for condoms for a local college student who can't keep it zipped. You get the idea. And more than half of your tax money pays for eight tons of paper per taxpayer, to PROVE that those extra people have done all those things.
You may have noticed, that people working 60 hours a week mostly aren't driving BMWs. In fact, they are in debt up to their eyebrows (or more), DESPITE working 60 hours a week, and are living paycheck to paycheck. That's partly because they are living in a house they can barely afford with a cell phone that costs ten times per month what Ma Bell once charged. But it's also because of all those things that taxes are paying for.
BTW, you ain't seen nuthin yet, the govt doing that stuff is WAY over its eyebrows in debt. So much that your family pays $5,000/yr just to pay the INTEREST on the govt's debt. And that amount increases every year - because that debt increases every year. And if interest rates ever get to where they were just 33 years ago....
There goes the BMW. And recently, a lot of people's houses have also gone bye-bye, when the above debts became too much for them - a process that's only beginning.
Taxes may have once been "What you pay for the benefit of living in this civilised country". But it hasn't been that way for nearly a generation now.
And it will get a LOT worse, before it gets better.
I think what you forget is the cost of living has increased so much but wages haven't caught up. Like Hawai'i for example, if the wages caught up with the cost of living, the min wage would be like 20hr lol.
I kind of miss the times when business were locally owned, back when that was true, owners felt they had a responsibility to the community and there employees. Seems to not be true today.
I think what we forget is the incredible amount of money that is earned by some corporations who cut wages to make more profit. Law are only created because we won't moralely police ourselves. Can you imagine what people would be making if we didn't pass a min wage?
What we forget is we live in a country of freedom, but if you can't afford to take time to enjoy it then, what good is it. We talk about personal responsibility, but when has it been our responsibility to ensure that investers share mulibillion $s in profits?
Taking money from one person and giving to another is not charity. It's theft. If you want to help the poor, give your OWN time and money. That's what those of us who have empathy do. That's how you help the unfortunate people. Greedy people just like to take other people's money and spend it. That's what our government does. That's not charity and it's not empathy.
Sowell says that zoning redistributes income upward from renters to property owners. That is theft. Renters are owed bigtime compensation.
Taxing people for the defense of the country and protection of the people is not even close to wealth redistribution.
Taking money from a plumber working 60 hours a week to feed his family and giving it to somebody else who is not working is WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION.
??? Government picks and creates winners and losers, who gets tax breaks and who doesn't, who it deigns to have property rights and who it denies property rights. That is how government redistributes. Zoning is nearly ubiquitous in this country and (according to Thomas Sowell) redistributed income upward from renters to owners.
Minimum wage jobs were never meant to support a family. These are/were entry level jobs intended to give our youth opportunitues to learn work skills during their younger years or during school etc... I cannot figure out why people earning minimum wage would think they can or should be able to raise a family at an entry level job.
If you raise the minimum wage to let's say $12.00 / hour....what do you think will happen ?
My guess is that there are only two things, or a combination of the two that could happen. The first would be that entry level employment would be scaled back due to budgetary constraints of the business and those who do retain jobs would be forced to work harder and/or faster.
The second would be that the business would be forced to raise their prices to pay the much higher wages. After all, since businesses can't print money, they only have one way of covering higher expenses.....and that would be to raise prices.
It certainly would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where the minimum wage was $12.00 or $15.00/hour, but yet the prices we paid were no higher than they are now, but that would also be a fantasy world.
Imagine in your own personal life....what if several of your service providers due to increased employee wage demands raised the prices they charged you by 20%. Would you just continue on as if nothing had happened, or woud you be forced to curtail some or all of your use of their services/products ? After all, you can't print money, you have to earn it and you're already working 40 or more hours a week to pay your bills....so what other option would you have ?
Businesses are under the same constraints and the laws of economics can't be repealed just because we wish they could. Prices go up....you don't buy as much or you get a second job, which seems counterintuitive to what the original purpose of this entire excercise was.
The way to earn more will always be to learn a skill that is in demand (preferably with not enough supply) and capitalize on a business needing your skills to fill a need they have. Unfortunately, flipping burgers, waiting on customers in a retail setting, or being a CNA in a care facility, while some skill is certainly involved, it's pretty much a skill that any person could learn/be taught in a very short time and doesn't position you well to earn a high wage.
I kind of miss the times when business were locally owned, back when that was true, owners felt they had a responsibility to the community and there employees. Seems to not be true today.
Oh the good ol' days, when families had one car, one phone, 3 channels of TV, and three or four kids living in 1400 square feet. The good ol' days before minivans, when it wasn't considered cruel and unusual punishment for three kids to sit in the back seat of a sedan (which wasn't air conditioned, by the way), when women were largely confined to three professions - teacher, nurse, or secretary. Ahhh, yes, those good ol' days when the cost of living was so low...because we didn't EXPECT to have private phones for each family member, 122 channels of television, satellite radio, a "media room," and $50,000 SUVs didn't become mandatory the minute the woman got pregnant with the second child.
My grandmother used to roll her eyes when someone used the term "good ol' days" and say, "I lived in the good ol' days - and some of them weren't so good."
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We, the people, say what is done with tax money via the people we elect to represent us and what we want in government. When the majority of people want to eliminate all public assistance, then they will be able to enjoy the sight of fellow citizens starving in the streets (children included) and they can build fortresses to try to protect themselves from the millions and millions of people who are in complete physical survival mode. How far outside your "compound" do you think you'd be able to drive your BMW then?
